A 50/50 affair

When an artist releases a best of collection usually has a few choices:
1) Do a singles cd usually compiled by the record label who targets the mainstream crowd who in the age of mp3 stops buying the record for it's 3 singles and just downloads.
2) Do a true best of where he tries to showcase the high points of his creativity by including a variety of songs that define his body of work.
3) Go for a few remixes and maybe some much hyped covers and b-sides.

Manson here apparently chose a weird path since this ain't a proper singles collection, since some singles (Coma White & I Don't Like The Drugs) aren't there and there are several cuts that wheren't released as such. On the other hand this doesn't look like a best of, unless Marilyn Manson has such a one dimentional opinion of his own work. Don't get me wrong, some great songs are here but if you listen to this record you just see an industrial rock band that doesn't have anything special to offer, yet the albums he did always where a ride among several styles showing that Manson and his cohorts where comfortable with both rocking hard and showing a more thoughtfull side. Personally i think that if he had done it like Anthrax re-recording all the tracks,so eliminating the gap made between different recording techniques, the only tracks that would stand out from an occasional listen of the cd would be The Nobodies and The Dope Show. The only new track included is a great cover of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus that show Manson is the master of the cover tunes, with Tainted Love and Sweet Dreams also included to back this theory. I admit i also got some "resentment" towards Manson from trying in any way to force feed one of his worst songs ever "The Love Song" by including it everywhere he can, but still even if he had spared us this song by including something better this cd would sttil be a failure to me. Yet no matter the disapointing disc you get a bonus dvd featuring all the videos (minus Tainted Love) which is worth the package. After all on thing can't be taken away from Manson, his creativity when it came to promote himself and the videos show case that in the best way possible. And as a plus you also get the video for (s)AINT that was censored from mtv for reasons you will immediately understand.
So should you buy it? Well as an introduction to Manson it's not the best, yet the videos dvd is quite a bonus, so I'd say get it for the videos but buy the albums too